A quest for land
May 5, 2008 at 1:21 am (caravan, land)
Tags: caravan, four-marriage, Martin Farm, Tennessee
We spent the next two day sprinting east, the accelerator pedal mashed into the floorboard. On April 6th, we reached the outskirts of Nashville as snowflakes were falling. I followed the parade onto the exit ramp, and when I took my foot off the gas pedal and pressed in the clutch to slow for the stop light, the engine’s revs stayed at the maximum allowed by the governor. I looked over at Rudolph with what must have been huge eyes.
“What the fuck! I can’t slow the engine down!” I stabbed at the pedal over and over, thinking there must be a catch in the linkage. Meanwhile, the buses were pulling away from me, headed I knew not where.
“Choke it,” Rudolph suggested. “Pull out the choke just enough to cut the revs.”
I pulled the choke knob out and sure enough the engine did just that - it choked to a halt.
“Not so much. Just feather it a little.”
I cranked the engine over and it roared back to life. Then, pulling gently on the choke knob, it slowed, sputtering. As I let out the clutch, I pushed the gas pedal and pushed in the choke. We pulled out across the intersection and caught up with the bus ahead of us. All across town, I practiced the weird maneuver as the early spring snow began to accumulate on the street.
“This is fuckin’ crazy,” I mumbled with every challenging intersection or slowdown. Eventually, we emerged from the city streets and headed out a road into the country. It was just us buses and vans on the road as we climbed a hill and arrived at a campground where each vehicle or two could fit into a parking slot with its own picnic table. This was Old Hickory Lake campground, our temporary parking place. Shutting down the engine was a huge relief after an hour of fearing catastrophe.
Over the next few days I borrowed tools, asked for advice - of which there was little among the Caravan members - and experimented with removing, repairing and rebuilding Shades of Blue’s carburetor. All those hours of maximum pressure on the accelerator had served to bend part of the linkage within the carburetor body. With pliers and a ball peen hammer I removed and reshaped the warped component and replaced the carb. Meanwhile, we’d become a major tourist attraction.
Word had gotten out about the hundreds of hippies that had arrived from California to buy land for a commune. On our second day in the campground, a Sunday, we looked out from our hilltop perch at a line of traffic stretching solid for as far as we could see down the road from Nashville. They drove by us, through the campground, at the pace of a funeral procession, ogling us, with our hair, our bell bottom jeans, our granny dresses and our colorful vehicles. We were the gypsies come to town, an unimaginable circus of unlikely transplants parked just over yonder from the Grand Ol’ Opry, the heartland of country music.
The easy access of the public to our living situation must have worried some authorities - we were, after all, sitting ducks for any locals hoping to run us out of the state by any means possible - and so after several days at Old Hickory, we moved to a campground on the shores of Percy Priest Lake, a more sheltered and private location where rangers could control the amount of traffic allowed to visit us.
A couple of the four marriage buses set out to explore potential land deals in Tennessee, Kentucky and Arkansas. The rest of us took the opportunity to hang out and get to know one another better. Rudolph and Kristin left Shades of Blue to move into new bus families made up of single folks, leaving Anita and I and the girls to live as something more like a family. But not for long.
For the first time since I’d joined the group, Anita and I decided it was time to introduce ourselves to Stephen. He’d met Anita, but had never really met me, nor us as a couple, which by then we’d decided that were were. We knocked on his bus door one morning and Michael let us in. The interior of the bus seemed to glow with its walls covered by glued-on oriental carpeting, its bed platforms covered with prints from India. I had the feeling I’d entered something between a Bedouin chief’s tent and a throne room. Stephen and Ina May sat together on one platform, Margaret was standing at the stove, Michael sat in the driver’s seat as we took our own seats on a small bench near the front.
I told my story of having read his book, caught up with the Caravan and decided to stay with both Anita and the community. He asked me some questions that seemed relatively trivial, though not what I’d call small talk. I noticed that they, too, had two young girls on their bus - Dana and Martha - both sitting in the upper bunk in the loft at the rear of the bus. As heavy as it was - I was totally cognizant that this family had lost a newborn infant only the week before - I was feeling pretty confident that I was passing the test, whatever that meant. But then Stephen got to the crux of the matter.
“Well, you may be wearing the pretty purple pants, but Anita’s the one really manifesting the bus. You ain’t done shit yet, but you got hope. I think you got it in you to manifest that bus no matter what you’re wearing.”
I looked down and sure enough, I was wearing the gaudy purple bells I’d bought the previous year as part of my getting outfitted as a hippie. In leaving my rebel political persona behind, I’d dumped the military surplus fashion and headed to the extremes of what I imagined the Summer of Love people were wearing. My first thought was, “This is the last time I wear these pants,” but then tried to understand what Stephen was telling me. Before I could come up with a reply, he was dismissing us from our audience with him. They had other stuff happening and, “We’ll see you around.” I had work to do. I knew I’d better get learning what it was, probably from people who’d been Stephen’s students for a while.
Soon after, we made the acquaintance of a couple of Haight Ashbury veterans I’ll call Lester and Joanna and almost instantly made friends with them. Lester impressed us as being a very knowledgeable student of Stephen, who seemed to have internalized not only the teachings, but also the language that we recognized from the book. He was glib, funny and engaging. Joanna was much more quiet, but clearly very smart. They were both good with the girls and we spent time walking with them around the campground, chattering away.
“I can get us some peyote. You into drinking tea with us tonight?” Lester asked. I had only good memories of my two experiences with the sacred cactus. I looked at Anita. She nodded with what I thought was some enthusiasm.
That night, by the light of our kerosene lantern we each downed a good half a cup of tea and waited for it to come on. It was my first nighttime experience with it and the visuals steadily become more intense until our individual boundaries began to melt away. We’d only been friends for a couple of days, but it felt as if we’d know one another forever. We were part of the same family. No, we were the same people. I was one with the other three and they all with me. Lester’s voice seem to penetrate my brain, my heart, my gut as he described our psychedelic unity in terms of a spiritual bond, a joining of souls….a marriage. It was incontestable. We had, indeed, gone beyond the definitions of individuality and reached the place that Stephen had described in Monday Night Class - the place where he and Margaret had to cop to Michael and Ina May that something had happened that caused them to agree to stay together to commemorate it.
To say that my mind was blown would be the understatement of the century. And to describe that night here in any more detail would be to devalue it and betray a sacred trust. But the next morning, charged with the energy of that night, we took a stroll around the campground in an entirely new world. We dropped in on our “old” friends in the New Hampshire bus - the first four marriage acquaintances Anita and I had made on the Caravan.
Daniel and Allan had their heads under the hood of the bus, which had been refusing to start since the day before when they attempted to drive into town for supplies. All the previous afternoon they’d tinkered with it - both of them were electrical engineers, with good understanding of the material plane. We were invited to come inside and the ladies immediately caught on that something had happened among us.
“Noooo…. you didn’t! Did you?” Fanny’s mouth dropped open. Allan stepped into the bus and sat in the driver’s seat to try starting the bus again.
“Allan,” Fanny said, “These guys married each other last night.”
Allan turned the key. The engine roared to life. Maylee looked like she’d just witnessed a miracle.
“Man, you guys are packin’ some juice!”
And we four became even more convinced that we’d progressed to a level of consciousness that explained why the four marriages led the Caravan. There was something to it, some power gained by taking the leap. It was not ours to question, but to fulfill this new cosmic promise. Then I thought - though just for an instant - How will I ever explain this to my parents?
Lester and Joanna gave up their bus - it was a nice medium-length bus - to another couple and moved their meager possessions in with us. The next day, we were back on the road. There were two prospects for land we had to check out - one in Kentucky and one in Arkansas. And what better way to assess them than to take the entire Caravan.
It was a one-day drive to the Kentucky land, where we were allowed to park for the night and take unstructured tours. I tagged along with a group that roamed through meadowns and woodlots for hours. It looked nice enough; I was hardly qualified to judge its quality for farming or ability to fit all of us, since we numbered nearly 300 and I expected we’d be growing once the people who’d left after us caught up.
On returning to the bus I noticed that my big duffle bag was sitting on the bed, and was only half full of the clothes I’d brought from back east.
“Anybody know what happened to my stuff?”
“I buried your leather.” It was Lester.
“You what???”
“You know we ain’t into animal products. It’s animal skin. I buried it. The boots, the fancy fringe vest, the belts. If you’re living with us, you’re never gonna wear that shit.”
“But you can’t just take my stuff and bury without talking to me first.”
“I didn’t want to get in a hassle with you about it. We all agreed that the best thing to do would be to get it over with and put it where it belongs - where you’d put any dead animal - in the ground.”
I looked at Joanna and Anita. They could barely look back, but didn’t contest what Lester had said.
“Great. Well, I guess I’m pissed and that’s not straight. And I’m sure no one’s gonna stick up for me here, so I’m going out for a walk.”
It took me a good hour to come to terms with it. So maybe I would have mailed my leather stuff back to my brother to sell, but where was the karma at for that? If I’m no longer into animal products, I’m not into empowering other people to use them or eat them either. It was a hard reckoning, but Lester was right. Either I was into these agreements or I wasn’t. I was wearing my Chucks - my canvas basketball sneakers - and those were the only non-leather shoes I had. I wasn’t about to wear stuff made out of hide. And I wasn’t thinking of leaving, so the decision was made. I went back to Shades of Blue and got straight with the family.
The next day at the drivers’ meeting, Stephen explained that our showing up as interested buyers had brought the owner’s family out of the woodwork and ignited a major feud about the ownership rights of the land and who could legitimately sell it to people such as ourselves. The uptight would have tainted any deal we could have made, so we instantly became disinterested and promised to leave the next day. We were off to the middle of Arkansas where another parcel was available.
On the ride down, it became obvious that the euphoria of our four-way communion was wearing off. The power differential between Lester and I was starting to rub me the wrong way. He had a lot of self-confidence, but seemed conservative at times. Anita was definitely not liking my showing affection for Joanna. And she was having a hard time feeling or showing affection for Lester. I was trying to rationalize it, thinking that we were just dealng with the flaws in our openness that showed why the commitment was really the best thing for us, as far as being spiritual students was concerned. Our problems stemmed from ego. We just had to work harder on suppressing those ugly, selfish thoughts.
By the time we parked on the Arkansas land, all four of us were ready for the loony bin. Something had snapped. Anita had gone into a shell. Joanna and I were the only twosome able to converse, but all we could talk about were the problems of the other two. We insisted that we should all four go visit one of the established four-marriages to get advice. Surely, this - like marital problems experienced by regular two-marriages - was a typical stage of getting used to the new configuration. We expected one of these original San Francisco four-marriages to chuckle appreciatively and say, “Oh, THAT one. You’ll grow out of it.” But that’s not what they said. In fact, it seemed more like what we brought to them only served to raise the grain on the problems they were also having. I got the impression that we were making them feel trippier rather than them making us feel less trippy.
It was hot, humid and infested by mosquitoes in that place. We were mentally miserable and grateful to hear that we’d rejected that land. But getting back on the road toward Nashville with our heads so screwed up was a journey into Hell. Time seemed to stand still and the word had gone around that we were headed for yet another possible land deal, or at least a piece of land where we might be able to stay a while - a more private scene than the parks around Nashville’s major recreation areas.
The vibes were - as Stephen would have put it and Lester did - curdled. Obviously this wasn’t working out, but it was impossible to change the living arrangement with the Caravan on the road. The hours and miles crept by. Anita wouldn’t talk to anyone. Kristina and Janine were wondering what had happened to their mom, and I’d lost all of her trust by acting as if she was the main problem. But we were supposed to by psychic yogis, weren’t we? Wasn’t this the kind of work the spiritual path demanded of us? To overcome petty emotions like jealousy and open ourselves up completely to one another? Or was this all bullshit?
After what e like an interminable drive, the Caravan headed down a straight unpaved road between open farm fields. All of the buses pulled over and parked once we reached a long wooded stretch to our right. Apparently, this was the place. Lester and I got off the bus and joined a large group of the Caravan’s men who were being met by a local sheriff and a wiry old guy who looked none to happy to see us there. Stephen was doing the talking, and one of the four-marriage guys was telling us that a member of the family that owned this 600-acre lot had met one of us in Nashville and invited us to stay temporarily on the land while we looked for a place to buy. The problem was, there were no roads through the property and we would have to cut our own through the woods.
I walked back the bus. Joanna was nowhere in sight, but Anita was in the driver’s seat.
“I’m leaving. I’m taking the girls back to Maryland.”
“What? Why would you want to do that? We haven’t even tried to work this shit out yet.”
“It isn’t gonna work out. I’m leaving.”
“Well you can’t just take off with all our stuff in the bus.”
“Then I’m leaving the bus.” And she bolted out the door, walked through the high weeds, climbed over a barbed wire fence and disappeared into the woods.
We’d arrived at the Martin Farm. And as it would turn out, the Caravan was over.


strongly declaring an idea, then leaving a long space of silence as the idea penetrated through the audience. I couldn’t understand half of what he said, but I was distracted by the scene itself. This was a remarkable gathering. What must this guy have done and said to bring this many people together just to listen to him?

